Friends In High Places

The Federal Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. has suggested that the use of wood from India that is not finished by Indian workers is illegal, not because of U.S. law, but because it is the Justice Department’s interpretation of a law in India. (If the same wood from the same tree was finished by Indian workers, the material would be legal.) This action was taken without the support and consent of the government in India.

So the Feds are now in the business of enforcing a law that India barely enforces?

No, really:

The Gibson facility wasn’t raided over allegations of tax evasion, charges of embezzlement, or even something as drab as child labor. Not even close. It was raided over what the DOJ deems an inability to follow a vague domestic trade law in India (one that apparently the Indian government didn’t seem too concerned about enforcing) regarding a specific type of wood. Not illegal wood, just wood with obscenely specific procedural guidelines.

So why would the government do this?

Putting aside the presumably misguided motivation to enforce another sovereign nation’s laws, why would a homegrown American company be the target of the Department of Justice in the first place?

It’s worth pointing out that Henry E. Juszkiewicz, Gibson’s Chief Executive Officer, is a donor to a couple of Republican politicians. According to the Open Secrets database, Juszkiewicz donated $2000 to Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN07) last year, as well as $1500 each to Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN). Juszkiewicz also has donated $10,000 to the Consumer Electronics Association, a PAC that contributed $92.5k to Republican candidates last year, as opposed to $72k to Democrats. (The CEA did, however, contribute more to Democrats in the 2008 election cycle.)

Hm.

I am a guitar player – and I know that Gibson is hardly the only company to build guitars out of Indian rosewood. Indeed, it’s prized throughout the business.

Could the reason be…politics?

One of Gibson’s leading competitors is C.F. Martin & Company. The C.E.O., Chris Martin IV, is a long-time Democratic supporter, with $35,400 in contributions to Democratic candidates and the DNC over the past couple of election cycles. According to C.F. Martin’s catalog, several of their guitars contain “East Indian Rosewood.” In case you were wondering, that is the exact same wood in at least ten of Gibson’s guitars.

So there you go.

Stand with Gibson: They have the Law on their side, just not the government.

I’m a life-long Fender guy – but I’m going to save up for a Gibson next. And I’m going to make sure a picture of me buying it goes to Barack Freaking Obama.

9 thoughts on “Friends In High Places”

The amounts of the political contributions sound like chump change to me and may have been less than the cost of the SWAT raid. Still, it’s another example of this tone-deaf administration and how Obama’s Department of Justice has become the Department of Payback.

Agree with Night W. The amts of the contributions are piddly. But having seen the behavior of leftest in Wisconsin, I see that it isn’t the amount given, it’s that they associate a person or business or group with Republicans, and therefore they need to be destroyed. You could give $10 to a Republican and be targeted for destruction.

Example? A coffee shop owner in Eau Claire Wisconsin wrote a letter to the editor supporting governor Walker. The looney left, including a leftwing preacher, are calling for a boycott of his business.

Apart from the basic issue of who was donating to whom, and the clear motivations that suggests, why is it so difficult for the DOJ to figure out what the law of the land is? And which judge issued the warrant? Don’t warrants need to be issued on probable cause, which implies, ahem, an actual law to be in play?

Seems that the DOJ, and at least one federal judge, have the same familiarity with the law that Tim Geithner does with Schedule SE.

I love Martin guitars. I love the way they sound, the way they look. They have a solid, unquestionable place in American music.

It breaks my heart that CFMIV is dumb enough to be a big time Dem donor (although in fairness, many of his high profile customers expect that). Worse is that it exhibits the rent seeking behavior that shows off the worst aspects of American crony capitalism.